


ennoshita chikara’s comprehensive guide to puppy rearing

by friedgalaxies



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Dogs, Falling In Love, Gen, Jewish Character, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 04:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30033243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friedgalaxies/pseuds/friedgalaxies
Summary: There’s a puppy in the rain.
Relationships: Ennoshita Chikara & Kinoshita Hisashi & Narita Kazuhito, Ennoshita Chikara/Tanaka Ryuunosuke
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19





	ennoshita chikara’s comprehensive guide to puppy rearing

Ennoshita Chikara meets Tanaka Ryuunosuke in their mutual first year at Karasuno High School.

Ennoshita Chikara fell in love with Tanaka Ryuunosuke in his first year of high school, too.

Chikara would like to say it was a graceful thing. He’d like to say he slowly fell into it, unassuming and soft as the break of a sun-warmed tide washing over his toes where they sink into the sand of the beach; to the point where he woke up one morning in the middle of their high school career and realized he had been living it, breathing it, blossoming in it.

He would like to say that he realized it immediately, that it didn’t keep him up at night wondering why his loud, shave-headed, tactless teammate was making his chest constrict and his palms sweat and his face hot whenever he flashed one of those toothy grins in Chikara’s direction.

But instead, Chikara tripped face forward into it and started suffocating, face down and drowning right off the bat. After all, it only takes an inch of water to drown.

Chikara and Tanaka met in their first year of high school, and it went a little bit like this:

_____

Chikara is one of seven first years to sign up for the Karasuno boys’ volleyball club, or the Karasuno boys’ VBC for short. It’s him, and his two best friends since elementary school, Hisashi and Kazuhito. The three of them had drifted around different sports clubs through elementary and middle school, only finally slotting into one in their second year of middle school, and by then it was almost time for them to graduate and leave the club. So they’re by no means good, but given the number of sign-ups the team has gotten from new first years this year, they can’t really afford to turn them down.

There are two more that Chikara, in all his infinite observance, never managed to catch the names of. Probably because they never bothered to show back up halfway through first year, but Chikara almost hadn’t either, so he can’t really hold it against them.

And then there’s a final two, Tanaka Ryuunosuke and Nishinoya Yuu, not from the same middle school but they get on like a house on fire and become so close so quickly they might as well have been best friends since the womb.

So it goes like this: there are seven first years that sign up for the Karasuno boys’ VBC that year, and five that manage to stay on through the end.

Chikara would like to say tryouts— and every subsequent practice after that, even— go gracefully, flawlessly, that he makes it into the starting lineup without breaking a sweat.

But it doesn’t go like that, obviously, because Chikara is never flawless or first-try-perfect in anything he does (and never will be.)

Chikara takes a ball to the face during tryouts and gets a bloody nose and watering eyes for the rest of the day, something his younger brother pokes endless fun at him for and something Hisashi and Kazuhito will later bring up as evidence that he’s been distracted by Tanaka since day one. He makes it onto the team anyhow, because there’s a limited number of them and they can’t afford to turn anyone down.

(Privately, he chooses to think it’s because the previous captain saw the fire in his eyes despite the cowardice and apprehension overtop and decided to give him a space for that spark to burn into a roaring flame.)

There’s twelve of them in all, and when the two nameless, faceless first years don’t come back there’s ten, and when the third years graduate there’s just eight.

(And then Asahi gets afraid so he leaves and Nishinoya leaves with him and there’s just six, for a while there.

But before all that happens it goes like this:)

It’s raining. Chikara has an umbrella, a simple little black thing he made sure to tuck into his bag that morning, after seeing the greying skies and making sure his little brother had his rain boots and raincoat and an umbrella of his own. He’s in sixth grade, and even if he insists he’s grown now and doesn’t need Chikara’s help anymore, he still crawls into Chikara’s bed whenever he has a nightmare and doesn’t leave till morning.

(That’s how it always goes: someone else first, and then Chikara. Benchwarmer, stopgap, second string, number six. No more, no less.)

It’s raining and the five remaining first years are walking together, past the Sakanoshita store at the bottom of the hill where they always manage to grab a snack after practice (even if Tanaka almost always has to bum money off of one of them for his own.) It’s a new routine but it’s nice, warm and eclectic and inviting, and Chikara could really get used to feeling like he’s part of something even if he still doesn’t know two-fifths of their little group all that well.

It’s raining, not hard but pattering down quickly enough that no dry spots manage to form on the pavement as they walk. It’s raining and Chikara is listening to Tanaka and Noya get into their third mock-argument of the day, something about a pretty second year girl and dibs and the rain seems to muffle their noise just a bit so it doesn’t echo around the street like usual, not even Noya’s indignant squawks as Tanaka attempts to yank his hood downwards so warm rain collects in it.

It’s raining and Tanaka is laughing and Hisashi and Kazuhito are chuckling quietly to themselves and it’s warm and Chikara hears… mewling?

No, that’s not quite right, not mewling but still the cry of some small animal and Chikara has helped his auntie raise enough litters of miniature poodles to recognize the cry of a too-young puppy when he hears it.

Chikara stops mid-step and the group continues on without him for a few more steps before jolting back, staggering into stillness like a glitching video game. Kazuhito looks back at him with an eyebrow raised from underneath the umbrella he shares with Hisashi (because Hisashi forgot his, again) and asks, “You okay, Chika?”

Chikara shakes his head, then nods, then says, “I’m fine, but— shh.” And holds a finger to his lips, straining his ears for the source of the noise.

The mewling cry comes again, damp and soft-edged in the warm rain, and Chikara follows it back a few steps to where it echoes from an alleyway wedged just past the Sakanoshita store. There’s a cardboard box, wilting from the humidity and a little damp, with a raggedy washcloth or baby blanket or just some random scrap of fabric inside it and tucked inside is a little wriggling lump of a puppy yelling it’s tiny lungs out.

Tanaka comes around the corner, the rest of their little group trailing behind him, one of those crumbly protein bars he likes half-eaten in his hand and crumbs on his face, just as Chikara is crouching down to grab the puppy out of the box it’s been abandoned in. “Uh, Ennoshita? You good, dude?”

(Chikara’s heart does a double take when he stands again; his head would too if he wasn’t already looking at Tanaka, so he settles for staring down at the wriggling, crying, too-young puppy freshly tucked into his shirt collar instead.)

“Oh, shit!” Tanaka exclaims, protein bar forgotten. The puppy wails again. Tanaka quickly tamps down his volume, though he exclaims with no less energy, again, “Oh, shit!”

“Is that a kitten?” Noya says, popping up at Chikara’s elbow. He almost jumps, almost, because Noya is far too fast and unnervingly quiet when he wants to be.

“A puppy. Not sure what gender, I didn’t check. Definitely way too young to be separated from it’s mother, though.” Chikara explains, already bustling back down the street in the direction they were heading, in the direction of his house. Thankfully, it’s not too far from their school.

Tanaka fixes Chikara’s umbrella back in place when it starts to tip off his shoulder, easily keeping pace with him. Chikara nods gratefully in his direction.

He hears footsteps that means the other three are easily keeping pace behind the two of them, already brimming with questions. It isn’t long before Noya exclaims, “I had no idea you knew anything about dogs, Ennoshita!”

“His aunt breeds poodles.” Hisashi answers for him. Chikara just nods, focused on the little puppy that has gone alarmingly still against his chest. A quick duck of his chin confirms it is still alive, little breaths puffing out onto his skin, just fast asleep from the warmth accumulated beneath the layers of Chikara’s uniform and raincoat.

He has no idea how long it’s been out here, but a damp cardboard box with a scrap of fabric is nowhere near warm enough for a puppy so little, so young. He wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t even old enough to be weaned yet, but he’d have to examine it closer once they got home. The puppy’s back rises and falls quickly with each sleeping breath, warm, gentle puffs of air ghosting over Chikara’s neck. The puppy is hot against his skin underneath his uniform shirt and undershirt, all little pink belly and tiny paws.

“Just a little guy, huh. Must be dead tired from crying his lungs out.” Tanaka muses with the kind of screw to his (pretty) mouth that Chikara has come to know means he’s frustrated with someone, but with no logical target to direct his anger to, is keeping it locked up behind his teeth. Tanaka actually has better impulse control than most think. He’s not about to start screaming in misdirected rage at any of them.

Chikara hums, walking a little faster. He pulls out his phone to text his brother, who is more than likely home by now. He doesn’t attend any after school clubs, unlike Chikara, but he plays clarinet in his middle school band. Chikara can only hope he didn’t stay behind for extra practice.

_[ did auntie leave behind any PMR? i know there’s a warmie and syringes in my room, pls go get them. ]_

_[ i think there’s some in the kitchen._

_did u find a puppy? ]_

_[ in the rain behind sakanoshita. almost home. ]_

_[ k. be safe <3 ]_

_[ ofc <3 ]_

Chikara takes a moment to thank the stars above that he and his little brother are close. He couldn’t fathom what it would be like if his relationship with Chikyuu was anything like what he’s heard of Tanaka’s relationship with his older sister, or the chaos that is the Nishinoya home with Chikara’s classmate and his three older sisters that’re just like him (equally short, equally athletic, equally loud.)

To his surprise, the other first years don’t peel off as he reaches his street and instead follow him to the front door, folding up their various umbrellas and shaking the water off their raincoats on the front stoop of the Ennoshita home, underneath the overhang.

“Uh, you all didn’t have to—“ he starts, but Kazuhito levels him with a sharp look over Noya’s shoulder and the words wilt and die in his mouth. “Okay. Okay, uh, my little brother is home, so, uhm, be aware of that, I guess? I’ll ask him to make you tea.”

Hisashi snorts and Kazuhito waves off his concerns, and Tanaka and Noya look uncharacteristically nervous.

“Please,” Hisashi says, “we’ve got this.”

“Besides, we’d never pass up a chance to mess with Chikyuu-kun.” Kazuhito adds. Hisashi laughs his agreement. Chikara smiles nervously and takes a moment to kiss the _mezuzah_ (fingertips to his lips, fingertips to the carved wooden scrolling of the mezuzah’s surface) before entering the home. Kazuhito and Hisashi follow suit, but Chikara is too busy toeing off his shoes in the genkan and jogging to the kitchen to hear if they explain the process to a bewildered Tanaka and Noya.

(It wasn’t an actual kiss, though that process had always been fun to explain to whatever new friends he or Chikyuu brought home. Hisashi and Kazuhito had been doing it since the three of them were kids, so familiar that Chikara almost forgot that whatever new friends he managed to miraculously make on the volleyball team in high school would similarly need the process explained.

At least they wouldn’t actually mouth-to-wood kiss the _mezuzah_ , unless Hisashi was feeling particularly malicious.

Chikara had a cousin that did that. He didn’t start kissing his fingertips first and then touching the _mezuzah_ till going over to that cousin’s house for the first time.)

“Chikyuu!” Chikara calls into the (mostly) empty house, “I’m home! I brought friends!”

“I’m in the kitchen!” Chikyuu calls back. Chikara rounds the corner into the spacious kitchen just as his brother turns to face him, shaking a bottle full of a mixture of puppy milk replacer and water in one hand.

Chikara spots the warmie, a small plastic disk that heats up to the approximate body temperature of a mother dog or cat, underneath a small blanket that was more akin to a wash rag and in a spare cardboard box sitting on the kitchen counter. He heaves a grateful sigh and levels a weary smile at his little brother, who smiles back.

“You found it at Sakanoshita?” Chikyuu asks, and Chikara can hear the ruckus of his friends removing shoes and hanging up bags in the genkan. Chikyuu’s eyes widen a little. Clearly, he had been expecting the usual fare of Hisashi and Kazuhito, who were just as much of brothers to him as Chikara is.

Chikyuu, somehow, had missed out on the Ennoshita boldness genes and was almost painfully shy. Chikara had been mislabeled as shy more than once in his life and his quiet, unassuming nature would continue to garner him such, but it was clear within minutes of meeting them that the brothers could not be more different when it came to being outgoing.

“Behind Sakanoshita, in the alley. No idea who left it there.” Chikara carefully removes the puppy from his shirt, checking that it hasn’t left a wet spot on his chest he hadn’t felt in his rush, and gently places it down in the box. Chikyuu hands him the bottle, not so subtly inching towards the doorway and towards the safety of his room, far away from strangers.

“Why don’t you put on some tea for them? They’re nice, I promise,” Chikara says, ruffling his little brother’s hair with the kind of annoying reassurance only an older sibling can manage. Chikyuu glares and combs his hair back into place with his fingers, though his ire is half hearted.

He’s just putting on a kettle to boil when the others round the corner into the kitchen, chattering amongst themselves. Noya whistles, long and low.

“Nice place you’ve got here, Ennoshita.” he says. Both Chikara and his brother turn around the comment, Chikyuu flushing up to his ears and ducking into the safety of his shoulders. Chikara smiles, one of the pleasant, placating ones he keeps in his back pocket like a business card.

“Thanks, Noya. Make yourselves at home, I should probably call my aunt.” Chikyuu tenses. “And this is my brother, Chikyuu. Chikyuu, this is Noya, Tanaka, and you know Hisashi and Kazuhito.”

“Hey Chikyunn,” Hisashi croons, rubbing his knuckles into the top of Chikyuu’s head. Chikyuu swats at him, glaring. The puppy continues to slumber, puffing out fast, soft little breaths.

The PMR mixture is warm against his skin when Chikara tests it against his wrist. He sits at one of the tall stools at the counter and levers the puppy up into a forty-five-degree angle. The puppy yawns, big and pink and soft, and Chikara smushes the blanket into a cushion to rest the puppy against while he dials his aunt with his free hand. He can hear his friends puttering around in the background, dragging out chairs around the kitchen table and settling into them, as the puppy latches onto the bottle and begins suckling fiercely. Chikara will have to make sure it doesn’t drink too much.

“So,” Tanaka starts in a voice that is meant to be conspiratorial but comes off way too loud in the enclosed kitchen. Chikara politely pretends not to hear him over the sound of his auntie’s dial tone where his phone is pressed between shoulder and ear. “Are Ennoshita’s parents not around, or…?”

“Don’t just ask that, dude!” Noya hisses, somehow even less quiet than the former, with the telltale thwack that means he’s smacked Tanaka in the arm. Tanaka whines pitifully in the back of his throat.

Kazuhito sighs, and even though he’s got his back to them Chikara knows he’s exchanging a Look with Hisashi, one of the ones the three of them communicate fluently in when there’s no place for words. “It’s probably better that you ask him, but… not really, no.”

Chikyuu’s ears have gone tomato-red, and Chikara knows he’s heard just as much of the conversation as he himself has.

“Hey, Auntie!” Chikara says just this side of too loudly when his aunt picks up, cutting the conversation in the background off before it can go any further without him there to guide it. The puppy suckles away, showing no signs of stopping even with the bottle nearly half empty. “Are you busy?”

Chikyuu has long since served their guests tea (and left out a mug for Chikara) and escaped to his room by the time Chikara gets off the phone with their aunt. The puppy has also long since finished her— Chikara flipped her over to check mid-conversation— bottle and is now sighing contently in the way only a puppy can. She’s maybe four weeks old, not quite ready to wean but old enough to try eating solid food, which is better than Chikara expected. He has no idea about breed or anything beyond that, but she looks healthy enough, and her appetite is more than.

“Alright,” Chikara says, turning around and gently placing the box containing the puppy lounging on her warmie in the center of the kitchen table. “Who wants to learn how to take care of an orphaned puppy?”

Tanaka and Noya’s hands shoot up like they’re in class. Chikara laughs, just a little cruelly, and he sees a touch of dawning horror on both their faces.

“Man, if you were that eager in class maybe you wouldn’t be nearly failing across the board.”

Their indignant shouts and Tanaka’s flushed face will bring him good dreams till the end of time to come.

It’s been a good few hours since the others went home, and Chikyuu eventually crept out of his room once the coast was clear to help Chikara with dinner. Hisashi stayed behind, as he usually does. He doesn’t talk about it often, especially not when people other than Chikara or Kazuhito are around, but Hisashi’s home life has never been particularly kind to him.

(He’s sporting a new bruise shaped like the imprint of a much larger hand on his upper arm this week.)

Hisashi is sitting at the dinner table with the puppy, gently feeding her a new bottle and making amused little noises as her tiny paws claw at the air for purchase, kneading into the soft stomach of a mother that isn’t there. Chikara’s aunt once told him puppies and kittens did that to stimulate their mother’s teats for more milk. He thinks it’s sweet.

(Tanaka had been sweet with the puppy. He kept holding up his other hand for her to rest her little paws on, cooing as the baby-soft pads of her snow pea sized paws pressed against his rough hands.)

“You look content.” Chikara comments. Hisashi hums.

“She’s cute but I could never do this for a job or anything. I think I’d lose it the first night I had to wake up every three hours to feed them.” Hisashi snorts, stroking a single finger down rhe puppy’s back. Her fur is bristly and short, the color of melted milk chocolate. A few of the toes on her front paws were white, and her tail curls up like a wood shaving over her back.

(Tanaka’s big, rough hands that are so gently with an infant that barely fits into his cupped palm.)

Chikara laughs. “Bottle babies are needy! Just imagine how a mother dog feels.”

“As needy as you?” Chikyuu comments. He ducks out of the way of the kick Chikara aimed at his shins, cackling wildly. Hisashi grins.

(Brown eyes that were normally squinted in some kind of play-act at a dark grimace sparkling with pure, unadulterated joy.)

“He’s not wrong.” Hisashi adds in a sing-song kind of voice. Chikara fluffs the rice for their curry with a little more force than he intends, scowling. Though, it probably comes off more like a grimace, if Chikyuu’s snort is anything to go by.

(“She’s sucking on my finger….” Tanaka had whispered in wonder at one point, the puppy’s tiny pink mouth wrapped around the tip of his pinky finger once the bottle had run out. Chikara’s heart did double time.)

“Don’t come for the man making your dinner. I could very well poison this, you know.” Chikara threatens.

_____

A full year passes. It goes like this;

They lose. They lose. They lose again.

Chikara leaves. He comes back. Hisashi and Kazuhito do the same.

The third years leave. Chikara and the other first years become second years. No one new signs up for the club, not yet.

They lose. Asahi gets scared. He leaves. Noya follows.

There’s a gap on the team like the space where a tooth is missing, tangy like copper to the taste when prodded at with the tip of your tongue.

First years sign up. They win. Noya comes back. Asahi comes back. They get a coach.

He and Tanaka are walking home from practice (when Chikara checks his calendar later, it’ll read exactly one year since he found that puppy in a box in the rain behind Sakanoshita.)

It’s just the two of them, since Noya had after school detention and Hisashi was going with Kazuhito and his brother and his brother’s boyfriend on some kind of double date to see a new movie neither Chikara or Tanaka, both pitifully single, hadn’t been invited to.

Tanaka is walking his bike between them. He’s started biking to school in the mornings, on account of bundling up better endurance, or something, but he still walks with the rest of the second years back from club.

It’s an unseasonably cold spring day. Chikara’s nose is surely pink. Tanaka keeps glancing at him, then glancing away, his head down low and tips of his ears red. Chikara is attributing it to the wind chill, even if his people skills say it’s something else entirely. But there’s no way he’s the reason making Tanaka’s ears red, is he?

Second string. Bench warmer. Number six.

(He was briefly number four, there, for a bit. It hadn’t felt good like he expected a promotion up two whole numbers to feel.)

“Hey, uh,” Tanaka finally speaks up. “Tell Uteki happy birthday from me, okay? And give her this.”

Tanaka fishes around in his pocket and Chikara isn’t sure what he’s expecting him to pull out that he wants to give to the dog that Chikara found in the rain exactly one year ago today and marked this day as her birthday, but one of those fancy frosted dog cookies isn’t it.

He slaps it into Chikara’s palm. Chikara stares at it. It’s shaped like a bone with pink frosting and “Happy Birthday!” written in friendly bubbly font. Chikara stares at it some more.

Tanaka starts to fidget.

(Fixing the umbrella on Chikara’s shoulder when it started to slip. Feeding the puppy, named after the rain she was found in, so very gently with a huge beaming smile on his face. Welcoming him back to the club when he left. Treating him like a friend. Walking home from club with him even though he had his bike and could’ve ridden it home.

It all snaps suddenly, cleanly, into place, like it had never been scattered about the inner workings of Chikara’s brain like a thousand pieces of a puzzle he wasn’t sure how to put together in the first place.)

It’s an unseasonably cold day in spring.

Chikara looks up, and says, “I’m in love with you.”

Tanaka’s whole face wrinkles and goes pink. “For getting your dog a birthday cookie?”

“No-! Well, kinda for that, but also for- for all of it. For walking home with me every day. For being so gentle with that little puppy we found in the rain. For welcoming me back like I never left even when I ran away. For being… you. For being my friend.” Chikara takes a deep breath. Bows. Shouts at the top of his lungs.

“I’m in love with you, Tanaka Ryuunosuke!”

There’s hands dragging him back up by the shoulders. Tanaka’s whole face is red and there’s a bike in the way and the handlebars are pressing really uncomfortably into Chikara’s rib cage but then Tanaka is hugging him and then he’s kissing—

Ennoshita Chikara and Tanaka Ryuunosuke meet in their mutual first year at Karasuno High School.

Tanaka Ryuunosuke had been in love with Ennoshita Chikara the whole time, and it was all because of a puppy in the rain.

_____

(Ukai Keishin is too old for this shit.

He grumbles, and huffs, and gives his two boys their moment behind his store anyway.)

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed! i finished writing this and am now posting it at 3am and have full intention to not come back and edit it at all. it’s very much not beta’d. as always, comments, concrit, and concerns are appreciated!


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